if someone wants to explore the meaning of Dasein and a hostile party butts in with, say, Adorno's excoriating analysis of Heidegger's abuse of language and celebration of irrationality? Would that be philosophical? — Jamal

Heidegger himself might contrast gossip with attending to the matter itself. It's primate-all-too-primate of us to love and hate and (anti-)identity with the faces painted on bags of memes and forget to dig for the memes beneath soap opera, to yank them out for 'endless recontextualization for the hell of it.'

To answer your question, it could be philosophical as an icebreaking joke. Shouldn't we have wings on our shoes when we do this stuff ? I don't pretend that my wings never fall off.

Fair question. I'm a fan of Austin, who's method involves the close and detailed analysis of the terms of our language, the "tools of trade"; I use that sort of analysis in my own considerations, having the OED and various etymological dictionaries at hand. This is quite a different process to mere stipulation, seeking an understanding of the historical development of terms and their interrelationship. Rather than closing the conversation off, this approach invites further commentary and comparison.

But it doesn't go down well in a forum. such as this, where if any attention is paid at all it's in order to point out how irrelevant it is.

A term such as Dasein is stipulated. It's what folk now call a term of art, a neologism, having no history, or rather not relating to any etymology, imported into English with a vast baggage. It's no good to reject the use of Dasein, so one might look to the use; but notice that the place the word is mostly used is in discussions of what it means... These are grounds for suspicion.

I gave the example above of using a definition at the commencement of an argument. That's not problematic, indeed it is setting up the furthering of the discussion by admitting the limitations of context, and so inviting critique.

I think perhaps a philosophical discussion needs a linguistic hierarchy of three classes of words. Most words being working class, taken for granted, over-worked and underpaid attention to; then some middle-class words, pedantically defined, and always following the rules of logic; and finally some few aristocratic words that are what the discussion is all about.

Which might suggest that one's philosophical instincts in this discussion are somewhat indicative of ones' class loyalties. Or it might just be a big tease.
———————————————————

I propose poetry as the "art" of language, and naming of ships, species, infants and philosophical -isms as acts of poetry. Here is my argument and reference:— Henry Reed, Naming of Parts.

Art is indefinable as to substance or function because it does not operate in the world, but in the mind, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Poetry restores meaning to language traumatised by politics, advertising and philosophy, and now by robotic abuse too. The business of philosophy, then is to sharpen the tools provided by the poet, not to say anything for itself. That is mere politics –

The confusions which occupy us arise when language is like an engine idling, not when it is doing work. — Wittgenstein, PI

That is to say, when the engineer of language is tinkering and tuning.

It says "we ought use the term this way and here's why". That can be disputed. — Isaac

Yes. You'll perhaps agree that everything can be disputed throughout. De Man writes some good stuff on irony pervading an entire text, without being concentrated in one spot. I can imagine an inspired dialogue wandering all over the place. It just needs to stay interesting in a nontoxic way to all participants. A definition is a prelude, an invitation to cocreative halfadversarial exploration.

imported into English with a vast baggage. — Banno

Isn't English crammed with imports though ? Personally I wouldn't mind if we used 'existence' for 'Dasein,' or something like that. The French used something like 'human reality' (which might not have been ideal, but they ran with it.)

Are there any terms from Frege I can pick on? [Just kidding!]

EDIT: actually you did say that the definition of art I gave might be useful. — Jamal

I had a brief chat with an economist yesterday about art. There is an amusing fiasco emerging in Australia's art business in which it seems that white fellas have been "guiding" indigenous artists so that they produce more saleable work...

The conversation yesterday was about how this ruins the story of a piece; and the implicaiton was that art objects carry with them a narrative, and that it is largely this narrative that determines the value of the piece.

Your comments had me puzzling over the difference between an artist and an artisan. I had thought of this previously as a difference in the narrative, but if one takes your definition, there is something of ritual involved as well - magic involving ritual.

Unfinished musings.

Personally I wouldn't mind if we used 'existence' for 'Dasein,' or something like that. — plaque flag

The analysis of existence that followed from the work of Frege and Russell is to my eye far better than that given by the Germans. I would not be happy to have it befuddled in this way.

Isn't English crammed with imports though ? — plaque flag

The point is that words with a history are less suspect than those invented in the comfort of one's armchair.

We check understanding of a concept by checking that it is used as expected. — Banno

:up:

How about semantic norms? Used properly. Is he holding that fork right ? I don't just expect Americans to drive on the right side of the road. One demands it. One also does not assume a conclusion. One does sometimes discuss edge cases, address gaps in the mostly unwritten law.

Page 6.

The analysis of existence that followed from the work of Frege and Russell is to my eye far better than that given by the Germans. I would not be happy to have it befuddled in this way. — Banno

You might like Feuerbach on this issue.

it is largely this narrative that determines the value of the piece. — Banno

:up:

Bones of saints.

The question then is what more is involved, and what Adorno's definition shows us.

Is a headpiece, of feathers and gum, prepared with care for one's own use in a ritual dance, a piece of art? It fits into an important narrative, with robust meaning, yet it is embedded in magic, not yet removed from the lie of being true. Each of the men prepare their own - they are not specialised artists.

So here perhaps we have a failed definition that regardless extends our understanding of art and of definitions...

WHy? From what little I've seen he seems to fall into the same problems.

Yes, the failed definition is also a success. It's a metaphor. As a matter of style, it's offered exclusively. But perhaps the speech act should be interpreted as a gift, as a good place from which to peep at a complex phenomenon for a moment.
***
Earlier I was thinking about people who'd say 'nothing is true.' I use to like this kind of radically open-minded aphorism. Is this really self-cancelling ? Only if we are crude enough to take it as a theorem and not as an efficient hyperbole. The right tone / context saves it. [ I know you dislike pragmatism, but I used to love it (still like it), and ideas are just tools is not the worst position (understood charitably.) ]

Earlier I was thinking about people who'd say 'nothing is true.' I use to like this kind of radically open-minded aphorism. — plaque flag

Makes me think of Adorno's one: "only exaggeration is true".

Makes me think of Adorno's one: "only exaggeration is true". — Jamal

:up:

Exactly, which is a true exaggeration itself !

WHy? From what little I've seen he seems to fall into the same problems. — Banno

He's uneven but really great at times. A happy, horny, humanist. Here's a little sampler.
==============================================================
Unlike sense experience, thought is essentially communicable. Thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual.
...
Thought comes from being, but being does not come from thought. […] The essence of being as being [i.e., in contrast to the mere thought of being] is the essence of nature. (VT 258/168)
...
To say that something exists in actuality is to say that it exists not only as a figment of someone’s imagination, or as a mere determination of their consciousness, but that it exists for itself independently of consciousness. “Being is something in which not only I but also others, above all also the object itself, participate” (GPZ 304/40).

A FRIENDLIER GERMAN EXISTENTIALISM

Feuerbach urged his readers to acknowledge and accept the irreversibility of their individual mortality so that in doing so they might come to an awareness of the immortality of their species-essence, and thus to knowledge of their true self, which is not the individual person with whom they were accustomed to identify themselves. They would then be in a position to recognize that, while “the shell of death is hard, its kernel is sweet” (GTU 205/20), and that the true belief in immortality is

a belief in the infinity of Spirit and in the everlasting youth of humanity, in the inexhaustible love and creative power of Spirit, in its eternally unfolding itself into new individuals out of the womb of its plenitude and granting new beings for the glorification, enjoyment, and contemplation of itself. (GTU 357/137)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/#EarlIdeaPant

Yes, the failed definition is also a success. It's a metaphor. As a matter of style, it's offered exclusively. But perhaps the speech act should be interpreted as a gift, as a good place from which to peep at a complex phenomenon for a moment. — plaque flag

Interesting to look at these together:

Only exaggeration is true. — Adorno

Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth — Adorno, Minima Moralia

I think the latter is not a metaphor so much as, like the former itself (as you pointed out), an exaggeration. There may be exceptions, it may not stand up to scrutiny, but it shows something about art nonetheless, and not really or entirely by analogy. My thread title is a bit like that, though obviously not as subtle. It might not be mere clickbait, but an exaggeration to make the point that often, definitions should not be used in philosophy.

Fair question. I'm a fan of Austin, who's method involves the close and detailed analysis of the terms of our language, the "tools of trade"; I use that sort of analysis in my own considerations, having the OED and various etymological dictionaries at hand. This is quite a different process to mere stipulation, seeking an understanding of the historical development of terms and their interrelationship. Rather than closing the conversation off, this approach invites further commentary and comparison. — Banno

:up:

But it doesn't go down well in a forum. such as this, where if any attention is paid at all it's in order to point out how irrelevant it is. — Banno

I don't know. Sometimes it works.

A term such as Dasein is stipulated. It's what folk now call a term of art, a neologism, having no history, or rather not relating to any etymology, imported into English with a vast baggage. It's no good to reject the use of Dasein, so one might look to the use; but notice that the place the word is mostly used is in discussions of what it means... These are grounds for suspicion. — Banno

A couple of things. One is just that you can probably imagine a better example (unless you mean that this sort of issue is common to all such exegesis). Second point is that you're just calling into question the very project of trying to understand Being and Time. That's all very well but it wouldn't be a very philosophical engagement in this case.

I gave the example above of using a definition at the commencement of an argument. That's not problematic, indeed it is setting up the furthering of the discussion by admitting the limitations of context, and so inviting critique — Banno

Not sure I understand this. Isn't this the kind of definition we've been talking about?

Your comments had me puzzling over the difference between an artist and an artisan. I had thought of this previously as a difference in the narrative, but if one takes your definition, there is something of ritual involved as well - magic involving ritual. — Banno

Oddly though, the common distinction between artisans and artists is that the things the artisan makes are functional. But art in magic ritual is functional too.

Let's not clutter up your discussion any further. If you want to continue, we can take it out to the parking lot.

I think perhaps a philosophical discussion needs a linguistic hierarchy of three classes of words. Most words being working class, taken for granted, over-worked and underpaid attention to; then some middle-class words, pedantically defined, and always following the rules of logic; and finally some few aristocratic words that are what the discussion is all about.

Which might suggest that one's philosophical instincts in this discussion are somewhat indicative of ones' class loyalties. Or it might just be a big tease. — unenlightened

I’m not sure what to say about this but I like it.

it shows something about art nonetheless, and not really or entirely by analogy. — Jamal

:up:

I agree. I think I was not right to call it a metaphor. I like the idea that language discloses or unveils phenomena. Adorno did that.

:up:

It's hard to see what you could be meaning by 'value' here. Even if you wanted to gain a 'better' insight into phenomenology, or post-structuralism by your question, deciding in advance that 'better' only consists of answers which accept both traditions rather than question them indicates that you've already decided others are not as capable as you of determining what is and isn't the case, as such the enquiry seems disingenuous. — Isaac

Well, I don't see how you would get a better insight into the relation between two traditions by rejecting one of them. Rejecting a whole tradition as being wrong-headed seems itself to be wrong-headed, in any case. A balanced view sees all traditions as forms of life. I understand that AP is a form of life, that must yield some insight within a certain field of enquiry. The fact that I have little interest in that field of enquiry, says more about me than about AP. What I see as most wrong-headed is the claim that only a certain field of enquiry or approach is really doing philosophy.

Phenomenology and post-structuralism have enough commonality to be mutually cross-fertilizing, but it would seem they are both more or less useless to AP, because the approaches seem incompatible. AP may actually be of some use to Phenomenology and PS, but that may well be on account of the latter two approaches being more open-ended; i.e. they allow that there is more to philosophy than analysis of the role of language.

So. I'm not talking about "deciding in advance", and I'm not defending the continental traditions, but just using them as an example. You won't get far in any field if you call into question the "usefulness" of the entire discipline.

Someone else who wants to make this thread all about me. :grin: — Banno

No you misunderstand or perhaps you just like to think that. It was precisely the opposite: to point out that it is not at all about whatever narrow conception you or anyone happens to have of what philosophy consists in.

Then Banno stuck his nose in in his usual smug, bullshit, lazy way. He pretends he's involved but he doesn't put any effort in. — T Clark

For what it's worth that seems like an accurate characterization of Banno's general approach to me, and I've said much the same on quite a few occasions.

I don't know. Sometimes it works. — Jamal

Art uses the root "ar-", as in articulate, armour, arm, article... "to fit together". Artisans and artists fit stuff together. Artisans work with metals and stone and paint, artists with the more refined stuff of the muses - history, poetry, comedy, tragedy, music, dancing, astronomy. Hence Bachelor of Arts.

Whcih probably amounts to, while they are artisans, what we do is art.

you can probably imagine a better example — Jamal

An article I am reading, from the AAP review, has as its topic differentiating rationality from normativity (probably paywalled). It commences with an extended exposition on the way both terms have been used historically, going on to deny that rationality is identical to normativity. Given that the topic is the use of these terms, the article could hardly avoid going in to some detail, offering this up for critique. It would be silly if the article instead stipulated, ("make it clear exactly what I intend the meaning of specific words are for the purposes of that particular discussion" — ) rationality and normativity and then claimed "look, they are different", refusing to have anything to do with further discussion of their use. Such a process closes of any criticism - "youa re just using the word differently"

...you're just calling into question the very project of trying to understand Being and Time. — Jamal

Well, yes, indeed. It's that same point of methodology. Dare I say that part of the reason the Germans are considered difficult is their stipulations close off criticism; their terms construct a linguistic bubble for themselves, separated from the rest of us; not unlike the artists and the artisans mentioned above.

And of courser that's not a process peculiar to the Germans. Talk of qualia does something similar, as does formal logic, private language, and so on.

So there is a methodological choice here, after constructing one's bubble, between choosing to live inside it, and trying to open it up.

And Davidson's On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme fits here, as a demonstration that such bubbles can never be wholly discrete, independent.

All this is saying is that perhaps there are better ways to articulate such things - and that's the place of philosophy; fixing the plumbing.

I had a brief chat with an economist yesterday about art. There is an amusing fiasco emerging in Australia's art business in which it seems that white fellas have been "guiding" indigenous artists so that they produce more saleable work... — Banno

It's called "dots for dollars." You probably already knew that. Art doesn't have to adhere to traditions. It can evolve and it would really weird if Aboriginal art didn't change post exposure to the outside world. Those who insist that their paintings should be telling some sort of story (as opposed to just standing for the kick-ass modern art it is) are just arrogant.

How do you classify words? I think you could picture them in such a way that it's absurd to say they have the property of being definable.

It's called "dots for dollars." — frank

Actually it was this specific incident that was the topic. Provenance and authorship are not the same as tradition, but are part of the story of an artwork. Of course a piece need not tell a story, but it is part of a story, one that sets the piece in a social context, one way or the other. Part of the story now for those pieces is that non-indigenous art was passed off as indigenous work. That has de facto devalued the work.

That link wouldn't load for some reason. It's illegal for non-indigenous people to pass their works off as indigenous, but indigenous people can make whatever they like and call it indigenous.